Individual Entry

Mater Lacrimarum in the flesh!

The trailer for Dario Argento’s upcoming Mother of Tears/The Third Mother has been running in Italian cinemas in front of Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof (his half of Grindhouse, which was split into two films for its European release), and one thoughtful viewer had the presence of mind to camcord it, the results of which are now available on YouTube. Bearing in mind that this is just a very brief trailer, and that the image and audio quality are both quite poor, it’s very exciting to see these tantalising glimpses of the film.

The musical accompaniment, which I’m guessing is an excerpt from Claudio Simonetti’s score for the final film due to the presence of the words “Mater Lacrimarum” in the choral accompaniment, reminds me very much of Jerry Goldsmith’s work on the Omen trilogy (and I consider this a very good thing, because I think they are among the finest movie scores ever created), while the presence on the traditional Satanic imagery (in particular the goat’s head with a pentagram on its brow) suggest a distinctly different tone from the more fairytale-oriented Suspiria and Inferno. This is all good, from my perspective: while I hope Mother of Tears includes many of the elements that we know and love from the first two films in the trilogy, it’s also nice to see Argento experimenting with new ideas. October 31st (and whenever the film becomes available to those of us outside Italy) can’t come soon enough.

Thanks go to Mariana at Dark Discussion for uploading the video to YouTube.

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The suggestion is that the Italian theatrical release has been cut, but that the DVD will be uncut. If true, then it’s majorly disappointing, but at least the director’s cut will be released at some point.